What airline furloughs could mean for Arizona's economy

Name: How airline furloughs will impact Arizona’s economy
Uploaded: 2020-10-01T17:25:16-07:00
Description: With United and American furloughing thousands of employees, this could trickle down to Arizona's tourism industry.

How airline furloughs will impact Arizona’s economy

With United and American furloughing thousands of employees, this could trickle down to Arizona's tourism industry.

PHOENIX - Two of the nation's biggest airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines, are furloughing 32,000 employees after negotiations in Washington failed to produce more federal aid for the industry.

This will not only impact the flights coming in and out of hubs, but it will also impact Arizona's local economy if something isn't done soon.

"How often does this happen that you have unprecedented support for a month and Congress is unable to come up with a stimulus bill to place our piece of it."

Paul Hartshorn, Jr. with the Association of Professional Flight Attendants says thousands of flight attendants will lose their paychecks and health care, but it won't only affect them and their aviation workers.

"I'm talking about hotel van drivers that have health care with the hotel, tourism could be impacted, food vendors at Sky Harbor."

That's because this will impact how many flights are coming in and out of airports. Travelers are concerned about this, too.

"It could be a worry because of the long waits and the help."

While U.S. air travel is down 70% from a year ago, the question now is, what happens when the demand comes back?

"We can't just come back and be called back at a moment's notice. So the issue here is that you are going to lay-off all these FAA trained employees and when demand returns in the spring and we get closer to a vaccine, we aren't going to have the capacity and have the demand her for the traveling public," Hartshorn said.

However, there is still some hope. Airlines have said they could roll back the furloughs if Congress comes to an agreement on a relief package.

The airlines and labor unions are in Washington, D.C., and haven't ruled out a stand-alone package.